Yearly News

May 07, 2018Western partners with Nunavut Arctic College in the Canadian CubeSat ProjectWestern University recently announced its partnership with Nunavut Arctic College as participants in a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) project, where teams of professors and students take part in a real space mission. Western received one of 15 CSA-funded grants to build a miniature satellite called a CubeSat. The CubeSat project aims to enhance the STEM outreach of Western University’s Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX) by taking CubeSat operations into the high school classroom both in Southwestern Ontario and Nunavut. Remote access to the CubeSat will facilitate live demonstrations of satellite communications and interpretation of received data.

May 01, 2018300th MRO-HiRISE Imaging Campaign of Mars Planned by Western-Based TeamIt’s the tricentennial anniversary of the first 2-week mission-planning “cycle” of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)... and our Western University-based team has the honour of planning it! The 300th HiRISE’s imaging campaign executes on the evening of Saturday, May 12th and continues to Saturday, May 26th as Mars continues into Northern Fall/Southern Spring.

March 19, 2018CPSX Undergraduate Research Award winner of 2017, Emily Pass, wins Co-op Student of the Year AwardEmily Pass won the CPSX Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Award last year to work with CPSX faculty member, Dr. Stan Metchev, and Computer Science faculty member, Dr. Steve Beauchemin, over the summer of 2017. She designed and implemented the software, algorithm and code for the telescope array, Colibri. Emily has now won a national Co-op Student of the Year award from Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada.

January 26, 2018Western scientists believe bright fireball event near Grand Bend dropped meteoritesA network of cameras directed by Western University observed a bright fireball across southern Ontario at 7:23 p.m. on Wednesday, January 24. Analysis of the video data by Western scientists suggests that fragments of the meteor are likely to have made it to the ground between the communities of Saint Joseph and Crediton, Ontario.